The present disclosure relates to protein photoelectric conversion devices, photoelectric conversion systems, protein photoelectric conversion device manufacturing methods, photoelectric conversion system manufacturing methods, and protein-immobilized electrodes. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to use of a protein with a cytochrome b562 base in protein photoelectric conversion devices, photoelectric conversion systems, protein photoelectric conversion device manufacturing methods, photoelectric conversion system manufacturing methods, and protein-immobilized electrodes.
Protein is expected to become the next generation functional device that replaces the semiconductor devices. While the semiconductor devices can only be miniaturized to as small as several ten nanometers, protein can exhibit highly sophisticated, complex functions in much smaller sizes of 2 to 10 nm.
There has been proposed a photoelectric conversion device that uses a protein, specifically a photoelectric conversion device that uses a protein-immobilized electrode of a structure in which a zinc-substituted cytochrome c obtained by substituting the central metal iron of the heme in the horse myocardial cytochrome c with zinc is immobilized on a gold electrode. The protein-immobilized electrode is described as being capable of producing a photocurrent (see JP-A-2007-220445). As another example of a photoelectric conversion device that uses a protein, a device is proposed that uses a protein-immobilized electrode of a structure in which a zinc-substituted cytochrome c552 is immobilized on a gold electrode (see JP-A-2010-190646).
There are reports concerning cytochrome b562, including an expression and purification method using Escherichia coli (see Nikkila, H., Gennis, R. B., and Sliger, S. G. Eur. J. Biochem. 202,309 (1991)), conformation (256B. pdb, see Mathews, F. S., Bethge, P. H., and Czerwinski, E. W. J. Biol. Chem. 254,1699 (1979)), a method for extracting a heme (see Itagaki, E., Palmer, G. and Hager, L. P. J. Biol. Chem. 242, 2272 (1967)), a method for incorporating zinc porphyrin (see Hamachi, I., Takashima, H., Tsukiji, S. Shinkai, S., Nagamune, T. and Oishi, S. Chem. Lett. 1999, 551 (1999)), a method for incorporating a quinone into a molecule (see Hay, S., Wallace, B. B., Smith, T. A., Ghiggino, K. P. and Wydrzynski, T. Proc. Natl. Sci USA, 101, 17675 (2004)), and an immobilization method for a silver electrode (see Zuo, P., Albrecht, T. Baker, P. D., Murgida, D. H., and Hildebrandt, P. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 11,7430 (2009)). There are also proposed a photoelectric conversion device for blue light that uses a zinc-substituted cytochrome c552, and a photoelectric conversion device for red light or green light that uses a modified zinc porphyrin cytochrome c552 (see JP-A-2010-190646).